Mary Kenny“You’d be forgiven for thinking that 1916 has now become a brand”, writes Mary Kenny
Enter any well-established bookshop between now and next year, and what will strike you immediately are the number of books commemorating the Easter Rising of 1916. Even if you do your book-shopping via the internet, at least 20 titles marking the centennial next year will be suggested, from Tim Pat Coogan’s 1916 to Joe Duffy’s Children of the Rising, from walking guides to Dublin in 1916 to the many personal profiles of those executed, such as 16 Dead Men by Anne Marie Ryan.
There are big academic tomes, and modest little primers: there are picture books, personal stories, topographical studies and military accounts.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that 1916 has now become a brand. The marketing boys and girls have got in on the act.
Then I hear people murmuring – “but are there too many works of commemoration? Is it all just a bit too much? Will we be sick and tired of it even before the celebrations begin?”
I’ve also heard some suggestions that the Catholic Church has been too silent and too passive on the issue. There has sometimes been a certain element of uneasiness that the iconography of Easter 1916 has exploited the Christian theme of death and resurrection.
A Jesuit, the late Fr Francis Shaw, wrote a well-known essay in which he questioned, particularly, Patrick Pearse’s sense of identification with the Redeemer. This, he said, was not a proper use of Christian images. Fr Shaw wrote the essay to mark the 1966 centenary, but it was considered too controversial and it was held back for publication until 1971.
Understandably, I’d say, the Church doesn’t want to get embroiled in a controversy around 1916, as the best intentions are that it should be an ‘inclusive’ event.
And if we were being absolutely honest about history, we would face the fact that the Catholic Church, in 1916, was itself split in its attitudes. The hierarchy did not approve of rebellion; but there were always nationalist-minded priests and nuns.
Yet, isn’t there a case for being honest about remembering 1916, and explaining the entire spectrum of mixed feelings which genuinely obtained at the time? My mother was a teenager in Co. Galway at Easter 1916 and she often talked about how ambivalent people felt.
Many of the people in her small town were furious that food supplies were interrupted because of events in the capital. There were shopkeepers going around grumbling “bad cess to those rebels up in Dublin anyway!”
I’ve always thought 1916 as inspiring and romantic, and it has come to symbolise the founding legend of the Irish state. But I also think we should try to be truthful about history, and approach it in all its shades, complications and even paradoxes.
If the Catholic Church is to take a public position on the 2016 commemorations, perhaps it should be simply that: “it’s complicated: it wasn’t a black-and-white issue at the time.”
And some Catholics then, and later, took the view that melding a rebellion with the Resurrection was blasphemous. So: discuss.
Cranes are a welcome sight on the skyline
“Oh look!” said my niece, as we approached Naas, in Co. Kildare. “There’s a sight to behold!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Cranes!” she replied. She wasn’t referring to the long-necked species of birds that look like herons, but the long-necked implements indicating a building site. There were two of them lingering over the Co. Kildare town which had seen so many main-street shops close down.
Where there are cranes visible, there are jobs. And where there are jobs, there is a decrease in emigration. We should welcome the sight of cranes whenever they appear in Ireland.
Religious people generally have higher fertility
There’s a surprising development among the Jewish community is Britain, which comprises just under 5% of the total population. While secular Jews – like secular Christians – have small families and relatively low fertility, ultra-orthodox, religious Jewish communities are set to grow at an exponential rate.
While secularised British Jews have a fertility rate of 1.93 children per woman, the ultra-orthodox religious have a fertility rate of seven children per woman. This means that ultra-orthodox Jews will outnumber the secular, or merely nominally observant, within a few decades.
This conforms to a trend that has been noticed in many societies: religious people in general have higher fertility than non-religious people. That means that communities of faith tend to overtake more secularised communities in terms of numbers.
The ultra-orthodox Jews believe in a strong adherence to faith values and affirm the Biblical injunction to “go forth and multiply”: they do not favour birth control. They also have a conservative interpretation of the differences between the sexes, and do not approve of ‘transgendering’ the roles between male and female.
They’re not regarded as very modern: but they’re outnumbering the modernisers just the same.